


Shedding Skin

by dustyfluorescent



Category: Deathless - Catherynne M. Valente, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-05
Updated: 2014-04-05
Packaged: 2018-01-18 06:16:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1418070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustyfluorescent/pseuds/dustyfluorescent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Good things come in threes, as do bad things. Some things come in sevens, or accidentally eights. Tom meets Koschei the Deathless at fifteen, and every time he meets him it changes his life. He splits his soul to hide his death from the love of his life, and even though it will never be enough he will not stop trying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shedding Skin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vehka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vehka/gifts).



Tom is fifteen when he meets Koschei for the first time and his life changes forever. He runs into a stranger who looks at him with wide eyes, a stranger whose hands feel cold and eternal and enticing and burn through his skin, and Tom decides he needs to conquer him and find out about his secrets because he knows, he just _knows_ that within him lies the secret to everything he has ever wanted. After that nothing is the same anymore, and Tom is all too happy to leave everything he is used to being behind. 

It's like the snake within him is leaving behind its dry, cracked skin. It's been there for ages but it doesn't fit anymore, and without it he is free. Every time it happens he wonders how he ever lived and breathed feeling any other way.

This is how it goes. 

He walks in to the Hog's Head like he does sometimes when he needs to be alone - or, alternatively, with someone, no strings attached, no questions asked, nobody he knows knowing what kind of company he prefers, vastly, to whatever there is to offer at Hogwarts. He's about to go and get a drink for himself when a tall, gaunt figure sitting in a corner table catches his attention. Not because he is handsome - although he is, no doubt about it, breathtakingly beautiful. There's something else. 

He orders two glasses of vodka - he gets this feeling it might be the right thing to do - and walks up to the man, sits down with the sort of lazy, seductive smile he knows can get him anywhere he wants if he does the right things. He passes the stranger the other drink, takes a sip of his own.

"Tom," he says. "Riddle."

The stranger lifts his head and looks at him for a long time with old eyes, ruthless, predatory, and Tom knows it has been a long time since this man cared about anything or anyone but himself. 

"Koschei," the stranger says, and takes a sip of the drink. It's a first step, and Tom gets this feeling that this time he will not be satisfied with just getting laid because this man is a challenge, and he likes a challenge. 

It's hard to say where it will go from here. First, he will get laid. What happens next is for later, but it could be good. It will be good. It will tear the fabric of reality and change history and nothing will be the same again.

Tom takes a sip of vodka, relishes the burn, thinks about sinking his fingernails into Koschei's back, drawing blood. Thinks about sharing kisses that leave bruises and taste like iron. Looks him in the eye, doesn't let up. He has beautiful eyes, and Tom wants to drown in them.

They drink their vodka in relative silence, the looks they share piercing through layers of clothing and pretence, into the deep dark core desire inside them both, something they share, something they don't, and Tom finds it hard to breathe like he's up 29,000 feet, like he's been running for years. Koschei is so much more than him. Koschei is exactly like him. Koschei is everything he wants, and things he wants he tends to get and this is one of those things.

Koschei's magic is effortless, brimming below the surface, like air twisting in the way of heat, like thunderstorms crashing into life. It's clear he doesn't consider it much, it's just there. To Tom, magic like that is everything. His hands are sweating, his heart beating faster, and oh how he _wants_.

Koschei gets up first. Tom downs the rest of his drink and swallows the burn, stumbles to follow. He came here to conquer, to dominate, but now he melts away in the hands of this man, not even been touched yet, just the thought of it, a vague memory from the future clinging to his soul. Koschei leads them up the rickety staircase Tom knows all too well, slips through a door to a room Tom has never been in and, after Tom has closed the door behind them, crowds him against the wood, twists his hand in Toms hair, holds him, stares, and then kisses him like he's never been kissed before.

It tastes like blood and sets him on fire, and he's never loved anything more in his life. He was supposed to conquer the enticing stranger with something about him that he can't understand, can't let go of, but instead Koschei does with him what he likes, proprietary, never gentle, grabs him and bites him and holds him close, and when Koschei presses him face first into the moldy pillows and finally, _finally_ pushes into him, Tom is crying and gasping like he never has before because he has never felt like this before. This kind of overpowering sense of finality. Like he has been made whole. 

His skin is on fire with every touch but the burn that he feels is much deeper than that. Tom has never come that hard in his life and he doubts he ever will. 

Afterwards there's blood under his fingernails and punishing scratches running down his back, his sides, his face is striped with sweat and tears, and there is _no death_ in this man and he should have realized, should have known, and he wonders if he did know all along. 

Koschei. It's not just a name. Koschei the Deathless.

Tom can't believe his luck. God truly does love the crazy and the immoral, each of his misfits he showers with good fortune. Danger, too, horrible things just about to happen lurking around each corner, and sometimes they are both wrapped up in the same parcel, but it only makes it better.

"Koschei the Deathless," Tom says, his tone slow, quiet, measured, not to be denied. "Where do you keep your death?"

Koschei's answer is an iron grip on Tom's wrist, fingernails digging to his flesh, and he looks through him past him straight into him.

"There is nothing to keep," Koschei says, "and there are no questions you are allowed to ask me. You will have to find out yourself how to hide your death, it is not something I can or will ever help you with."

Tom crashes his mouth against Koschei's, teeth, blood, fire. He might not find his death but he can steal his heart, take him over, keep him. He can try.

Except that after he leaves he feels more like he is the one who has been rearranged, taken prisoner, remade. Koschei's shadow clinging to his bones, Koschei's voice holding him down, and he is so cold, so cold, and it _burns_.

It takes a while of walking in the darkness wearing his skin inside out to get used to the sensation of living and breathing the touch of the Deathless. Tom does other things, speaks to a basilisk in a slow, quiet, measured tone that is not to be denied, splits his soul to hide his death and finds that once cannot be enough. It feels strange, his body half a soul lighter, and he feels like a stranger to himself and it hurts. The presence of mortals chafes against his raw skin, and everything about him is empty when Koschei isn't there.

He never goes back to anyone. Then again, he never lets himself be conquered like he let Koschei. Without a fight. Made new. This is on him.

So he goes back, goes looking for him knowing he will find him, buys a glass of vodka for a tall, gaunt figure sitting in a corner table, they look into each other and become what each other need. Tom has never been fucked like that and he doubts he ever will.

"Koschei the Deathless," he says, "where do you keep your death?"

"In you," says Koschei, and Tom understands that he can keep asking but he will never know. 

He leaves with a new skin, and it chafes against the world. He knows his death is hidden from most people but to Koschei it's still as obvious as a slap in the face, and it makes Tom feel weak in his eyes. 

He walks in the darkness of the shadow of the Deathless, and does other things. He holds his grandfather's ring in his hand, measures its weight, measures its worth, kills his despicable Muggle father whose name he carries unwillingly, and splits what's left of his soul to better hide his death. 

He doesn't feel that different after. Lighter. Like he could do anything. It doesn't hurt. He doesn't care that it should hurt, or that he should care.

It takes a while but he goes back, he was always going to go back, buys a glass of vodka for a tall, gaunt figure sitting in a corner table. Koschei looks at the ring on his finger before he looks at him. Tom has never been so thoroughly torn apart and beaten, he has never loved anything so deeply, and he doubts he ever will.

"Koschei the Deathless," he says, "where do you keep your death?"

"That ring is of my brother," Koschei says, "I don't want to see it again."

"Why do you let me come back to you?" Tom asks and wipes the blood off his chin with the back of his hand. The one without the ring.

"You are an escape from my eternal story I've lived so often it makes me sick."

They lie there, quiet, clinging onto each other for dear life. Tom has never been held like that and he doubts he ever will. And then it ends, like good things do, and everything is cold and hard and difficult for a time.

"You think you've hidden your death from me," Koschei says, "but it shines bright as ever. Every life you take to hide your death is another little victory over me, another thing I've lost in this abominable war. You can split your soul seven ways and still find you are not my equal, and your death will not be hidden any better than it was when you held a knife against your own throat when all of your soul was in the same vessel."

He pushes Tom to the floor, throws him his clothes, gets up and walks to the window.

"Leave. I can't breathe when you're here. And take that ring away from me, away from yourself."

He doesn't say anything more, doesn't look at Tom anymore, just stares out the window, waiting, and Tom goes, he forgets and remembers all the more clearly, and the piece of his soul that he carries himself turns heavier by the day.

The third time he splits his soul it feels like a relief, and he thinks, seven. Seven pieces. He can do seven. He would tell himself it has nothing to do with Koschei but it would be a lie because everything is about Koschei, and will never not be.

He can't deal with anything less than seven. 

When he finds Koschei again he's done it six times and then some, he can barely feel his soul, can't feel it split when he doesn't plan it because he doesn't have enough left. 

With Koschei, though, he can feel everything. Koschei's hands have never been so cold, never has his touch burnt him so fiercely, and Tom doubts it ever will.


End file.
